I stay quiet. I can hear him swallow before he goes on.
“When I was little, my dad had this study—he had two studies, actually. A normal study, where he did most of his work for the DFA. My brother and I would sit and help him fold pamphlets all night long. It’s funny. To this day, midnight always smells like paper to me.”
I’m startled by the reference to a brother; I’ve never heard one mentioned before, never seen his image on DFA materials or in the Word, the country’s newspaper. But I don’t want to interrupt him.
“His other study was always locked. No one was allowed inside, and my father kept the key hidden. Except…” More rustling. “Except one day I saw where he put it. It was late. I was supposed to be asleep. I came out of my room for a glass of water, and I saw him from the landing. He went to a bookcase in the living room. On the uppermost shelf he kept a little porcelain statue of a rooster. I watched him lift the neck away from the body and put the key inside.
“The next day I pretended to be sick so I wouldn’t have to go to school. And after my mom and dad had left for work and my brother had gone to get the bus, I snuck downstairs, got the key, and unlocked my dad’s second study.” He gives a short laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. My hands were shaking so bad I dropped the key three times before I could even fit it in the lock. I had no idea what I would find inside. I don’t know what I was imagining—dead bodies, maybe, or locked-up Invalids.”
I stiffen, as always, when I hear the word, then relax, let it skate by me.
He laughs again. “I was pissed when I finally got the door open and saw all those books. What a letdown. But then I saw they weren’t regular books. They weren’t anything like the books we saw in school and read in church. That’s when I realized it was—they must be forbidden.”
I can’t help it: A memory blooms now, long buried; stepping into Alex’s trailer for the first time and seeing dozens and dozens of strange titles, moldering spines glowing in the candlelight, learning the word poetry for the first time. In approved places, every story serves a purpose. But forbidden books are so much more. Some of them are webs; you can feel your way along their threads, but just barely, into strange and dark corners. Some of them are balloons bobbing up through the sky: totally self-contained, and unreachable, but beautiful to watch.
And some of them—the best ones—are doors.
“After that I used to sneak down to the study every time I was home alone. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop. There was music, too, totally different from the approved stuff on LAMM. You wouldn’t believe it, Lena. Full of bad words, all about the deliria … but not all of them bad or hopeless at all. Everyone was supposed to be unhappy in the time before, right? Everyone was supposed to be sick. But some of the music…” He breaks off and sings, quietly, “All you need is love…”
A shiver runs through me. It’s strange to hear that word pronounced out loud. Julian falls into silence for a bit. Then he continues, even more quietly, “Can you believe it? All you need…” His voice withdraws, as though he has realized how close we were lying and has moved away. In the dark he is barely an outline. “Anyway, my dad caught me eventually. I was just a little ways into that story I was telling you about—The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it was called. I’ve never seen him so angry in my life. He’s pretty calm most of the time, you know, thanks to the cure. But that day he dragged me into the living room and beat me so hard I blacked out.” Julian tells me this flatly, without feeling, and my stomach tightens with hatred toward his father, toward everyone like his father. They preach solidarity and sanctity, and in their homes and in their hearts they pound, and pound, and pound.
“He said that would teach me what forbidden books could do,” Julian says, and then, almost musingly, “The next day I had my first seizure.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“I don’t blame him or anything,” Julian says quickly. “The doctors said the seizure might have saved my life, actually. That’s how they discovered the tumor. Besides, he was only trying to help me. Keep me safe, you know.”
My heart breaks for him in that second, and rather than be carried away on the tide of it, I think of those smooth walls of hatred, and I think of climbing a set of stairs and taking aim at Julian’s father from my tower, and watching him burn.
After a while Julian says, “Do you think I’m a bad person?”
“No,” I say, squeezing the word past the rock in my throat.
For a few minutes we breathe together, in tandem. I wonder if Julian notices.
“I never figured out why the book was banned,” Julian says after a bit. “That part must have come later, after the witch, and the shoes. I’ve been wondering about it ever since. Funny how certain things stay with you.”